Thursday, November 5, 2015

Paraponera
is distributed throughout Central America and South
America, commonly found in the wet neotropic eco-zone. These antscolonies are
found in lowland areas, at elevations and many places. Paraponera is known as
bullet ant, infamous for its painful sting.

A
free flowing trade is good for the economy but unscrupulous elements exploit this and harm the national interests – smuggling and
moving goods fraudulently. It is not only
loss of revenue for the exchequer but also a threat to the security of the country. It is common knowledge that all goods
imported or exported out of India pass through the procedure of Customs for the
purposes proper examination, appraisal, assessment and evaluation. This is done
to check the legality of the trade as also for charging taxes as
applicable.

Gold
has always been a symbol of status and
power. It is Gold, drugs, iphones and other costly items that are often
smuggled across the border. Inland, it
could be rice and other commodities which are in short supply in one place.
There are reports often that ration rice gets smuggled out of the State. Sometime back, Customs Officials of Mangalore
seized coffee powder as nearly 505g of gold was found in dust form and mixed
with coffee powder.

Exotic
animals too get smuggled – star tortoises are often seized. Many a times, it is ivory, skin and parts of
dead animals………….. perhaps this is more eerie, as it was Paraponera that was
being smuggled !!

Paraponeraclavata
commonly known as the bullet ant, named on account of its powerful and potent
sting due to its venom. It is
colloquially - is hormigaveinticuatro ("24-hour ant"), referring to
the full day of pain that follows being stung. Paraponeraclavata was first
described by Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius, who named it Formica
clavata in his 1775 publication Systemaentomologiae, based on a worker he
collected.

MailOnline
reports that Customs officials in Sichuan province were left scratching their
heads in bemusement after finding hundreds of giant ants packed into parcels
sent from Hamburg.Around 800 of the large insects were seized by staff at
Chengdu Shuangliu Airport Customs last week, according to People's Daily
Online.The black creepy crawlies, later identified as harvester and Paraponera
ants, can grow up to 2cm in length and are known to reproduce rapidly, with the
queen laying up to 2,000 eggs per day.

The
ants were sent to Chengdu Airport, China, in tubes stuffed with cotton wool and
chunks of melon. On October 30, staff
detected suspicious-looking test tube shapes in an express package sent from
Germany whilst performing routine X-rays. Inside they discovered 400 of the
ants packed in the tubes, along with cotton wool, metal coils and pieces of
honeydew melon. After identifying details about the sender, customs officers
were able to seize a second identical package on November 1 containing the
remainder of the mystery insects.

Precisely
why the packages were sent remains a mystery, and customs staff have launched
an official investigation after the recipient failed to provide a valid live
animal quarantine license.The exact quantity of ants discovered in the packages
differs between sources, with both Shanghai Daily and China Daily reporting
that the actual figure was over 1,000 insects.

According
to scientists, the offending bugs can carry disease and threaten local
agriculture, forestry and possibly even human health. Chinese experts have
spoken out about the risk to the country's ecology from the continued influx of
non-native species and creatures since the 1990s.Chen Hai, head of the Sichuan
quarantine bureau, said: "At least 400 alien species of animals, plants
and microorganisms have invaded China. Of the globe's 100 most dangerous alien species,
more than 50 have invaded China,"